Data Components That Support the Staffing Process

PeopleSoft Resource Management presents employee information as an editable resource profile that organizes the information from the employee source database and adds information relevant to Resource Management. The resource profile functions as a resource's online resume. It includes skills, education, work history, preferences, specialties, objectives, and general information to match with the requirements specified on a service order resource request or express search for resources.

The resource profile contains the following information about each resource:

Resource pools support the staffing process and provide a mechanism to organize supply in a meaningful way to support Capacity Planning functionality. You can choose to structure your resources based on resource pools, and you can group your resources in any configuration in order to support their operations.

You can group resources into resource pools and define them in a hierarchy to establish relationships between different pools, thus enabling roll-up for analytics and reporting. You can model your resource pools on your company's organizational structure, but the way you categorize and manage your resources from a capacity standpoint can vary greatly from your organizational structure; pools may encompass a lower level of granularity or may group resources in a different ways.

You can also search for resources in the workbench and narrow your results by resource pool.

PeopleSoft Resource Management uses the resource schedule to interactively manage a resource's availability for assignments. Typically, employees in these roles have access to view and update the schedule:

• Resource

• Resource manager

• Project manager

• Practice manager

• Pool manager

• Staffing coordinator

You can create schedule entries manually to reflect meetings, training, or personal time. The system updates the schedule during the assignment process to reflect the resource's scheduled work.

If the Resource Management resource is also established as an eligible resource in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management or Staffing Front Office, the schedule will show all of the resource's assignments that were made through any of these products.

Once you define resource requirements for a job and identify an appropriate resource, you create an assignment to assign the resource to the job. Assignments are the goal of the staffing process. Each assignment pairs a resource with a unit of work. You can create assignments that specify the exact number of hours and minutes a resource is to be assigned to a job. You create assignments as the final step in a business process that usually begins with one of the following actions:

• The creation and fulfillment of a service order.

  You create an assignment when you select a resource to fulfill a resource request. You can request one or more resources—each with identical qualification and date requirements—for the same resource request. Each resource that is selected for the job has a unique assignment. In this way, you can change the assignment schedule or status for one resource without affecting the assignments for other resources who are associated with the resource request.

• The creation and execution of an express search.

  You can create an assignment by using the Express Search feature—also known as orderless searching—to find a resource that matches a specified list of competencies and accomplishments.

• A direct assignment without a service order or express search.

  You can use this process if you have already identified the appropriate resource to fulfill a requirement and you don't need to track the requirement on a service order.

• The creation and fulfillment of generic resource requests.

  You can use this process if you manage your resources with resource pools. Project managers can create generic resource requests from their project team. The requests are sent to the pool manager for approval and staffing.

If you use PeopleSoft Program Management, you can select a resource and create an assignment using any of the preceding processes. The resource must be managed in PeopleSoft Resource Management. In PeopleSoft Resource Management, you associate a project with each assignment. This enables new assignments to update the project's Resources page in PeopleSoft Program Management. Changes to the resource's project schedule in PeopleSoft Program Management are reflected on the assignment, resource schedule, and resource profile in PeopleSoft Resource Management. Conversely, changes to the assignment in PeopleSoft Resource Management are reflected in PeopleSoft Program Management.

If you use PeopleSoft Project Costing, a resource is added to the project team in Project Costing when you create an assignment for the resource in PeopleSoft Resource Management. Any changes made in the PeopleSoft Resource Management project schedule are reflected on the project team in PeopleSoft Project Costing. Changes made to the project team in PeopleSoft Project Costing are not updated in PeopleSoft Resource Management.

You can access assignment details by clicking a link in the Staffing Workbench component or My Assignments component, from Resource Management reports, or on a service order if the assignment is associated with a resource request on the order. Assigning a resource may require the approval of the resource's manager, based on the options that are selected for the business unit during PeopleSoft Resource Management implementation.

In PeopleSoft Resource Management, you can define services that are requested by a customer in the form of a service order. The service order form captures information about the customer engagement and includes one or more resource requests. The resource request section of a service order includes all data relevant to the identification of the requested resources. A new resource request is needed for each type of resource that is requested. Multiple resources can be requested on a single resource request, provided that the same requested skills, time frame, and location apply for each.

Once service orders are entered, they are maintained by a set of status values that reflect service order fulfillment progress. The system uses the requirements detailed in the service order and resource request to match the available, qualified resources during the order fulfillment process in the Staffing Workbench component.

If you use PeopleSoft Program Management, you can create service orders to fulfill generic resource placeholders on projects. When you find a named resource and create an assignment to fulfill a resource request, the named resource replaces the generic resource throughout the system.